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The carbon-burning process or carbon fusion is a set of nuclear fusion reactions that take place in the cores of massive stars (at least 4 at birth) that combines carbon into other elements. It requires high temperatures (> 5×10 8 K or 50 keV ) and densities (> 3×10 9 kg/m 3 ).
The CNO cycle (for carbon–nitrogen–oxygen; sometimes called Bethe–Weizsäcker cycle after Hans Albrecht Bethe and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) is one of the two known sets of fusion reactions by which stars convert hydrogen to helium, the other being the proton–proton chain reaction (p–p cycle), which is more efficient at the Sun's ...
As a side effect of the process, some carbon nuclei fuse with additional helium to produce a stable isotope of oxygen and energy: 12 6 C + 4 2 He → 16 8 O + γ (+7.162 MeV) Nuclear fusion reactions of helium with hydrogen produces lithium-5, which also is highly unstable, and decays back into smaller nuclei with a half-life of 3.7 × 10 −22 s.
Hydrogen fusion (nuclear fusion of four protons to form a helium-4 nucleus [20]) is the dominant process that generates energy in the cores of main-sequence stars. It is also called "hydrogen burning", which should not be confused with the chemical combustion of hydrogen in an oxidizing atmosphere.
Supernova nucleosynthesis is the nucleosynthesis of chemical elements in supernova explosions.. In sufficiently massive stars, the nucleosynthesis by fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones occurs during sequential hydrostatic burning processes called helium burning, carbon burning, oxygen burning, and silicon burning, in which the byproducts of one nuclear fuel become, after ...
The proton–proton chain, also commonly referred to as the p–p chain, is one of two known sets of nuclear fusion reactions by which stars convert hydrogen to helium. It dominates in stars with masses less than or equal to that of the Sun , [ 2 ] whereas the CNO cycle , the other known reaction, is suggested by theoretical models to dominate ...
The most common isotope of helium contains two protons and two neutrons, and those of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen – six, seven and eight of each particle, respectively. However, a helium nucleus weighs less than the sum of the weights of the two heavy hydrogen nuclei which combine to make it. [ 6 ]
Creation of elements beyond carbon through alpha process. The alpha process, also known as alpha capture or the alpha ladder, is one of two classes of nuclear fusion reactions by which stars convert helium into heavier elements. The other class is a cycle of reactions called the triple-alpha process, which consumes only helium, and produces ...